JorgeDavid

I am really glad you enjoyed the piece @Finish the Sextet! Thank you so much for listening and commenting! 🙂

Thank you so much for the nice words, @GospelPiano12! I am really glad you like the piece! I am also happy that you seem to agree with me over the things you enjoyed about the piece. There are some parts I am not so happy with but, in general, I was also really happy with the melody and phrasing and with that "modern but not too modern" sound (which, even though I know what you mean, I am also not sure what it consists in, but I also though the same 😅). Yes, I also would like to try orchestrate it in the future. I have two pieces pending to be orchestrated (this one and the Bagatelle No.2) but these days I am slowly learning orchestration while practicing the piano so I will probably do it a little bit in the future. They are slow pieces and I find I have much more trouble orchestrating slow pieces :S. Thank you so much for listening and leaving a comment!

I just listened to it and it was really beautiful! I knew Halo but, to be honest, I had never played it so I did not know the music. So I listened to the original theme first and then to your piece. I really enjoyed the piece. I think it is also great that you post everything in Musescore because the music can be played while seeing the score scrolling with all the instruments, so I might use your pieces to learn how to notate and use some instruments (Especially the percussion. In this piece the simple but effective use of the snare drum and bass drum is already something that helps me a lot, since I always have trouble imagining how to use and notate those instruments). I still need to gain some confidence for attempting an arrangement like that but I understand what you mean. It might be interesting to learn a a little bit more abut orchestration and then trying to apply the knowledge to reimagine some of my favorite pieces. Thanks for the advices!

Yes, mixing the study of an instrument with composition is not as easy is I though mostly because, at least in my case, if I do not focus full time to the learning of the instrument I feel like I do not progress at all. It is like if I learn only 30 minutes a day I cannot improve my piano skills and need to spend at least 1~2 hours on it everyday for seeing results. I also though about arranging other pieces for practicing, and it is a really good idea but, to be honest, I feel like arranging my own pieces give me that motivational boost that I need for taking real effort on studying orchestration. But I guess I should start considering arranging existing pieces even if it is just for practicing different orchestral techniques in a more mechanical way. I listened to the 'long artic midnight suite' and I really liked it! Specially the first movement. Even though the time signatures were unusual the whole movement felt so smooth! And the orchestration was great too. I did not expect the Spitfire instruments to blend so nicely with the MuseSound ones! Really nice piece! If I have to nitpick the couple of piano parts that started a couple of sections were a little bit to "new age" for my taste, but that is just a matter of taste, and it is not like they were not enjoyable. Thanks for sharing the piece! I agree. I actually bought in the past a few Berlin instruments for Musescore. And at first I thought "these sound amazing!" but as soon as I started composing with dynamics and expression markings they became quite unusable. Even the piano, where the change from mp to mf is like the change from p to ff in a normal piano. So, in the end, I ended up using only the MusesSounds. As you say, some brass are bad. I only like the Saxophones, that is why I used Saxophones for that Soli of the Jazz piece that I am still working on. I think it is not a bad idea mixing some instruments from Labs with the MusesSound! I think LABS work with subscription plan, right? I might consider trying it out in the future. Thanks for the explanation, @UncleRed99!

Thank you so much for the encouragement, @UncleRed99, I really appreciate it! In my case I always wanted to compose orchestral music and that is still one of the goals in the long term. My problem is always time. Mostly because of my piano skills. Practicing piano takes 70% of my time, which is only a couple hours a day, and I still do not learn as fast as I wanted to. But I invest on it because I feel it will help me compose much faster in the future. I did try orchestrating before. I have several orchestral books but I have no time to study them in an orderly fashion so basically I decided I wanted to orchestrate some of my pieces and read enough of those books for applying it to my pieces. 6 months ago I did my favorite one but it is actually more of a piano concerto than a symphonic orchestra. You can see it here from when I posted it in the forum! My problem is also that I do not compose that often. And I need pieces for trying to orchestrate them but I ran out of pieces hahaha. I pretty much posted here 90% of what I composed so I do not have many stuff and I rarely throw any ideas. Normally if I start something I finish composing something with it and post it. So for being able to orchestrate again I will need to compose some new things 😥. Now I actually have a piece I want to orchestrate, the "Bagatelle No.2" but I really like that piece so I put it aside to do it in the future when I have better skills. I heard nice things about the Spitfire LABS VST before! Do you use them in a DAW or it can be integrated with musescore and you use both sounds (Spitfire and MuseSounds) at the same time? Also, what audio plugins you use in musescore? What I do is using the reverb for all instruments as a group (instead of one reverb for each instrument) and also the ProEQ plugin, basically just setting each instrument to its family (for example, I set all strings instruments to "strings" option in the ProEQ). I feel the ProEQ plugin really make things sound so much more real. Thank you for the advice about labeling the piano grandstaff! I heard that is the best way to practice at first. Just composing at the piano and thinking about the sounds you want to writing it down roughly by main instruments and family, without going straight to notating everything in the orchestral score. Actually, recently I found a transcription of the whole "Lord of the Rings" OST that a fan made, exactly like that, with the piano and the outlines of the instruments and families and I am using it for listening to the score and seeing if I slowly learn something. I will need to try to compose for orchestra in that way myself too!

Thanks for listening and commenting @UncleRed99! Yes, since the piece happened to stay exclusively in the tonic key at least I tried to add some varied voicings to add some spice 😆 After all of you commented about the piece I listened to it carefully and that last section really made the piece drag a lot and made it feel even longer than it was. So I deleted that last section, made a new coda, and modified a few things here and there to try to make the piece a little bit less "bass heavy". It still drags.... but less haha. I still would like to add the initial section at the end but, for now, I deleted it and added a coda (I still do not like the last cadence of section B so I might have to modify that too to make the ending before the coda more conclusive). I might still consider adding a bridge in the future if I find some solution! I listened to the piece and it was really god! You are so good with the orchestral instruments too! It would still be quite hard for me to compose something like that but I guess everything times makes perfect! Thanks for sharing! Thank you!

Thanks for commenting @PeterthePapercomPoser! I did not know the prelude by Chopin. I think it is famous as somehow I think I heard it before, but I was not aware of its existence (really nice prelude, though!). The model was a really really simple Czerny beginner piano piece, a waltz, really simple. I used it as a model for the harmony and chords inversions of the first section, and that is the end of the commonalities. I guess my mistake was using as model for a slow piece a fast piece, since slow pieces need to be treated much different to a fast one. After composing it a similar piece came to my mind: Bach Adagio for Piano BW974. It is actually a Alessandro Marcello that Bach transcribed for the piano. Incredibly beautiful. The whole piece, with the exception of the coda and a single bar, has a constant accompaniment. However, there the accompaniment is less heavy since most chords are quite high (on the contrary to my piece or Chopin's prelude). For now, I deleted the repetition of the A section after B section since I felt that was the weakest part of the piece and also created a new Coda for relaxing the ear after such a constant stream of chordal accompaniment. I also tried to fix volume issues (with this accompaniment, making the volume correct between melody and accompaniment is so important) and modified the B part so it gets less "bass heavy" at times. No substantial change but I am happy it improved a little bit at least. Thank you so much for listening and commenting!!

Thank you so much Luis! I agree with you and everyone seems to be commenting the same. This is a strange composition for me because while I love the melodic contour that I composed I somehow did not manage to vary the harmonic content as much as I normally like to. I am trying to reharmonize some sections but it is not being easy. I changed few things here and there in the B section but I did not manage to make any substantial change yet :S. Thanks for listening and commenting!

Thank you so much for your comment @SergeOfArniVillage! I am glad you enjoyed the piece! 🙂 I though about your criticism and I totally agree with it. I guess I was not really listening and just stopped the accompaniment in those parts because it was the end of a section and did not give it a second though. When practicing at the piano it did flow much more natural to keep on playing the chords non-stop. I fixed it! I also considered your comment about a fermata here and there to let the music breath. While playing it myself I felt I did not want a fermata but, rather, just a little bit of natural rubato here and there that the player would know how to apply to let the music less "robotic". I changed the piece to Adagio since I felt this implied better my intended interpretation and tempo for the piece. However, I did added a ritardando right before the final dominant chord that I think makes a much better ending. It is a pity that, of course, I did not manage to make the ritardando sound as I wanted to with Musescore hahaha. Thank you so much, your feedback was really useful!

This was so amazing to listen to! I listened to some of your other videos from YouTube too and I love so much your style of composing. So amazing that you composed this as a challenge! The piano also sounds really great, is it one of the pianos from MusesScore? Which one is it? Thank you so much for sharing!

I agree, and also I am used to composing melodies that are so different to the ones used it Jazz that I feel I need to practice Jazz piano and soloing a lot until I can actually come up with those types of melodies in my mind. However, it is so much fun to learn it. Thanks for the advice! For now I am trying to focus on the blues scale only adding some approach notes here and there. Still long way to go since my piano skills are also not so good yet 😅 Thank you!!

Hello everyone! I just finished composing an Adagio for piano. It turned out to be quite a melancholic piece so it reminded me of a lament, that is why I named it "Adagio Lamentoso". It is a rounded binary form [:A:][:BA':] with a coda at the end. m.40 is the measure I am less confident about. I always have troubles going from one motivic idea to another one. In m.40 I transition to the main motive of the A section but I am not sure if it is smooth. Also, the piece stays mostly in the tonic Key, which can be a negative thing, specially since it is 4 minutes long. I tried to counter that lack of key changes with an interesting melody and varied chords voicings but I am not sure if it worked. Any feedback is welcome and hope you like it! PD: I composed it at the piano but I did not manage playing it as well I wanted to so, for now, I used the midi sound :S.

Hello @UncleRed99, Thank you so much for your feedback! I envy you so much for playing trumpet! Two of my favorite Jazz musicians are Miles Davis and Chet Baker, so the trumpet is one of the instruments I listen to the most! I got stuck with the piece because it became hard creating solos with the drums, bass, and everything together. It is still a work in progress and I plan to finish it all, but I think it will take me longer than expected to learn enough to complete it (particularly because I need to understand several instruments for creating the solos, and, specially the drums and creating transitions is being harder than I expected. I need to improve my improvisation skills too for making solos sound natural :S). In the meantime I am also trying to compose the shout chorus and the ending of the piece. Jazz is so different to classical music that I feel like I need to learn everything from scratch once more 😅 I will make sure to let you know when it is completed! Thank you for you encouragement!

Oh! It does not sound as complex as I would expect it to be! So basically you composed tonally but then make use of the microtones for adjusting for those tuning differences that the 12TET does not account for, right? But the, I am wondering, is it done only on the third of the prevailing harmony? In other words, if you have a bar where the harmony is Cmajor, for that whole bar you would flatten only the note E every time it appears? Or you flatten the notes respectively to the counterpoint? For example, if you have a melody in thirds you flatten the third with respect to the bottom voice? The first movement of the string quartet sounds amazing! Microtones seem to feel much more natural for strings than on the harpsichord. But I imagine it takes a little bit of time to get used to the new sound since we are so accustomed to 12TET. It is a really interesting concept and so convenient that we can change the tune so easily with the notation softwares!

Thank you so much, @PeterthePapercomPoser! Yes. I am planning on improving on it. Today I added the first solo, which I actually like quite a lot! I am trying to learn about different sections for now and, in the future, maybe add the whole band (or even making a new arrangement for it). For now, I will try to complete the solos, development and ending with this ensemble, as adding more instruments might be too big task for now! You are right, the singers and players (not on piano, of course, but even on piano they play both minor and major thirds almost at the same time to create the effect) make the tones lower on the blue third, so I think your idea is really good! But microtones is still such a unknown world for me. I see you have been composing with them lately! I heard to the invention and really enjoyed it. How does it work? Do you use it for adjusting the thirds according to the tonality of that moment so they are better tuned than with 12TET? I imagine it must be quite complex to decide on which notes to tweak and how much to tweak them. For passing chords I follow different methods depending on the context. I do not know much so, to be honest, for this time I just tried to keep it simple. I just harmonized in 4-voice close with the doubling of the melody in the bari sax and always leaving at least a minor 3rd between the top two notes. Then, I decided which tones to consider non-harmonic. I think that is the most interesting part, since in Jazz you could harmonize a 2nd in the melody as a passing tone or as an harmonic tone all the same. Then I followed one of four methods for the non-harmonic tones: Chromatic or step movement to the next harmonic tone in all voices. Diatonic movement to the next harmonic tone in all voices. Harmonizing with the dominant (if one note) or a chain of dominants or common progressions such as ii-V-I. Free counterpoint. I guess I used some diminished chords but mostly as a way of using the dominant with the b9. I did not use diminished chords as a "free pass" since I composed it mostl for getting used to the different methods. Finally I just changed the bass here and there but rarely, sometimes doubling other voices and sometimes with free melodies. It is a really "practical" method but, in the end, it actually gave much more freedom than I expected, even if following those simple steps. There are much more complex voicings that I want to get into in the future, but for now I decided to focus on the basics first! Thank you so much for commenting!